


Concessions

by renwhit



Series: Road to Damascus [3]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Cane user Jon, Canon-Typical Debilitating Existential Angst, Canon-Typical Tim Hating His Job, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Dissociation, End!Tim, Ghost!Tim, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, Minor Unreality, Non-Canonical Character Undeath, buckle in you beautiful bastards, minor abuse, none of you are ready
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-18 22:30:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22667551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renwhit/pseuds/renwhit
Summary: “When I was with those people, I felt more like myself than I have in… in I don’t know how long. I felt present, and solid, there to help until they were out of danger and I could relax. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”“I’m not saying it is.” She wasn’t gentle, no, but Basira was always steady. “I just don’t know if it’s a good thing, either.”Or, in which Tim learns how much a life is worth, and how much an undeath costs.
Relationships: Background Martin Blackwood & Tim Stoker, Background Tim Stoker & Danny Stoker, Basira Hussain & Tim Stoker, Jonathan Sims & Tim Stoker, Tim Stoker & Alice "Daisy" Tonner
Series: Road to Damascus [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1594225
Comments: 143
Kudos: 672
Collections: GerryTitan verse





	Concessions

**Author's Note:**

> allllllright guys, here we go. this is fic marks our turning point from “periodically sad but plenty lighthearted” to full tma-level tragedy/horror. like tma there’s always good parts, moments of levity, and places where that tension is released, but those are scattered among a LOT of less than ideal shit. bring tissues! 
> 
> new arrivals, be sure to read the previous installments before reading this one!
> 
> quick heads up: the abuse tag is in reference to a line where tim sees an arguing couple, and before he can intervene one of them hits the other and threatens more harm. the victim escapes before it can get any worse, and there’s immediate consequences for the abuser. it’s not too severe, but i don’t want to startle anyone!
> 
> suggested listening: dark by siv jakobsen (martin hviid remix)

It started with transparency.

Tim assumed it was a holdover from Jon’s trip into the g-ddamn Buried. He’d been minding his own business, walking around London as he tried his best to ignore the way crowds parted just slightly wider around him when one of the souls on the edge of his awareness winked out. The sprint back to the Institute took what may have been no time at all, but hell if he was paying attention. All his focus locked on _absence_ where there should have been _presence,_ and more importantly, on ignoring what that absence might very well mean. 

Basira was gone. Still off chasing some lead or another, like she had been during the whole ghost science fiasco. He didn’t think he’d be able to recognize her even if she was there. He’d actually call her a tentative friend now, rather than the fellow prisoner he barely knew back before he died, but they were far from close.

Melanie was gone. She didn’t say where to, not that Tim could blame her — after the story she told him about her ill-fated life-saving surgery, he wouldn’t blame her if she never returned again, illness be damned. Regardless, he didn’t think he’d recognize her spirit either. She still didn’t quite trust him, he still didn’t quite know her. 

Martin was here. Fog clouded his spirit as always, but it still showed on that compass set deep in Tim’s chest. Safe. Safe as anyone could be at the Institute, at any rate.

Jon, then. Shocker. Only he’d be the one to pull a stunt like this. 

Not that Tim knew what said stunt was, of course. Just that it was out of nowhere, probably stupid, and were it possible would be one step closer to giving Tim an ulcer. 

Maybe him trying to extend that compass into the Buried was just as stupid. People didn’t die in the Buried; what reason would there be for an avatar of death to sense lives it could never take? 

_Just try for a minute,_ he told himself. _A quick check, then go and do literally anything else until Jon gets back and you can yell at him for being an idiot._

A minute turned to an hour. An hour turned to tunnel vision void. Saying he wouldn’t have noticed if the Institute caught fire would have required him to remember the building existed around him in the first place. 

Fog rolled into the room at some point. Fog picked up a handful of beheld recorders and scattered them around the Choke. Fog sat next to him for a long while. Told him he couldn’t sit here forever — the bloodstain on the floor would be difficult to clean, and others said they could hear calliope when they came too close. He tried to tell the fog he needed to watch, to witness, but couldn’t be sure if he had a mouth or not. 

Seventy-six hours later, the creak of old, dead wood snapped everything into focus so quickly it gave Tim whiplash. The stupid, stubborn, self-sacrificial Archivist was back, and with him was… whatever her name was. 

Ex-cop (when did she get back?) and murder-cop started getting all emotional over each other, so Tim left. Jon’s dumb ass was back. Tim didn’t have to try and see into the Buried and could move on with his week. 

And, when he noticed his hands were still just faintly see-through, it took one conversation with Melanie to convince him it was from that strain. According to her, his form flickered in and out of view while sitting across from that damn coffin, his ugly wounds making occasional appearances alongside. 

Must’ve been a real treat for her to come across that without Jon or Basira to explain. Whoops. 

Just meant he needed to put in an extra bit of focus to look solid when not at the Institute. Like Jon said, people tended to look around or past him, but he had no plans to tempt fate. Hell, maybe this was normal. It wasn’t like Oliver had left a fun little guidebook on what to expect when newly turned into a ghost. There was no reason to get worked up about what might not even be a problem. 

His walks around London got longer and more frequent. With the strange way Jon looked at him these days, he needed the air before he snapped and asked what the hell his deal was. Sure, he looked a little more like a specter. Yes, he had more false starts when trying to touch objects, where his hand would sweep through something the first couple times he tried to make contact, but that was just an irritant. Nothing he couldn’t live (ha, _live)_ with. 

The route he walked was different every time. He didn’t have to worry about getting lost with that magnetic north in his chest, and it wasn’t as if he had reason to be nervous in dangerous parts of the city these days. What were any potential muggers going to do, stab him in the spectral kidney and steal his ghost wallet? He still had it in his pocket, but the only things folded inside were a picture of him and Danny and a few rewards cards for local shops he’d never have reason to finish and earn his discounted haircut or lunch or whatever else. 

If someone was that desperate to be two punches away from a free pastry from the bakery near his old house, he’d just give them the damn thing. 

Today he was a good bit down… Arlington, maybe? He didn’t exactly keep track, not when it didn’t matter in the least. Just killing time.

The sun was high in the sky, but judging by others’ coats it did little against the watery April chill. No awkward questions about his clear lack of anything warm to wear so far, which was good. He didn’t think most people would love his answer of, _I’m super dead and can’t physically change my clothes._

Better to skip that kind of conversation. Uncomfortable questions and all. 

Cool air grew colder in the shade of the scattered trees throughout what might generously be called a park. Normally he preferred to walk through places with more people, but without even thinking he turned to follow the path into this bit of green. With how open his days were, he needed the novelty. He nodded to a couple sitting on a nearby bench out of habit, though they didn’t look at him as one made a quick scan of the treeline with brow furrowed. That was fine. He didn’t need random interactions with strangers to fill his day, not with how inconsequential little things like exchanged nods and eye contact were in the grand scheme. It didn’t matter. 

He couldn’t say what made his steps slow as he passed one particular clump of bushes, or why when one gave a faint rustle he went to investigate. Whatever was in the little copse, he needed to see it, and never once thought to question the impulse.

Slumped against one trunk was a girl, probably around eleven or twelve. The first thing he noticed was how strikingly similar to one of the men on the bench she looked. The second was the way he could see her chest heaving even past her coat and thick sweater. The third, the blue tinge to her lips. If he had a heartbeat these days, it would have stopped at the sight. 

Tim cursed under his breath as he rushed over and knelt, hands frozen in the air halfway between them. He couldn’t— couldn’t what? What the hell was the protocol here? She couldn’t breathe, that much was clear, but it wasn’t as if he could pull her upright to open her airways more. Was she choking? Did that even matter when there was fuckall he could do about it?

She made eye contact, and the raw panic and desperation in her eyes struck like a blade. He needed to help her. He needed to help this girl or she would die. 

“Bella?” called a voice back towards the bench Tim passed earlier. “Bella, honey?”

The girl’s eyes shifted to look past Tim in the direction of the man he could only assume to be one of her fathers’, tears welling. Her lips moved with a horrible faint wheezing noise, and he could tell if she could speak, she’d be repeating _Papa, Papa, Papa,_ over and over again.

“She’s over here!” Tim stood and came to the edge of the trees, unwilling to leave the girl alone even if only for a moment. “She— I don’t think she can breathe, I don’t—” 

Before he could finish the sentence, one of the men bolted past him with a tight, desperate look on his face. _“Colton, her inhaler!”_ He knelt next to his daughter and pulled her up into his arms, straightening her back and gently tugging her shoulders to open up her chest in the exact way Tim had been desperately wishing he was able to just a moment ago. 

The other man pushed through the bushes a moment later, still rifling through a bag, then tossed a small bit of metal and blue plastic to his husband. Without missing a beat, he pulled out his phone next and dialed 999. 

As it rang, he caught Tim’s eye and mouthed, _Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you._

Tim only nodded in return, still a little shaky with sudden adrenaline. 

The girl should be dead. He knew that as well as he knew he _was_ dead. 

She was alive. Her fathers didn’t have to comb through the little park after losing track of her for just a moment and find her blue-faced and still clutching the ball she’d chased between tree roots. She was alive. She was alive. 

His hands shook. Adrenaline was a hell of a drug.

* * *

“Tim?”

Tim blinked to awareness and looked over at where Jon stood. In his hand was the blue stress ball Tim was pretty sure he’d been tossing and catching for… for however long he’d been in the archives.

He sat up and swung around from where he’d been laying on his back on top of one of the archive shelves. Didn’t have to worry about making the cheap structures fall and break through a wall to reveal some new horror show without any weight to tip it, after all.

“Oh. Sorry, didn’t realize I dropped it.” He reached for the ball when Jon held it up to him, only for his fingers to go right through. 

As he growled under his breath in frustration and shook out that hand as if shaking off pins and needles, Jon’s gaze followed each motion. Studying. 

Irritation bloomed in Tim’s chest as he made another grab for the ball, this time successful. 

“Thanks.” He returned to laying on his back and spoke instead to the ceiling above. “If you’re looking for a chat, you can come back when you’re ready to stop watching me like a science project.”

He could hear Jon sigh, and it irritated him more. Apologies he was a person and not another bloody _statement._

Back to manifestation practice. With how difficult it’d been these past few days, he needed it.

“I-I’m sorry,” Jon said after a moment. “I’m just— concerned.”

“Mm.” Catch, throw. 

“You’ve been kind of… out of it, recently.”

“Could say the same to you.” Catch, throw.

“Being in the Buried will do that.” Jon paused for a moment, but didn’t go to leave. Damn. “Did something happen?”

“Sure.” Catch, throw. 

“Tim.” Static. “What happened?” 

“Went on a walk.” Catch, throw. Resist pitching the ball at Jon. “Want to try that again?”

“What? I don’t— Oh.” An accident, then. Tim half-wished that made him a little less pissed. Instead, Jon’s apologetic tone only irritated him more. “I-I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I was doing it.”

“Right.” Catch, throw.

Jon bit off another sigh. It was for the best — any more of the put-upon scholar bullshit and Tim might throw something a bit bigger than a stress ball. 

“If you’re willing to tell me, I’d like to know what happened.”

Catch, throw.

“It might have something to do with your being an avatar, and it’s better to pool our knowledge. If I can help, I want to.”

Catch, throw.

“Please.”

Catch, fumble, drop. 

Tim pushed himself upright again, then off the top of the shelving unit. The impact he still expected upon hitting the ground never came, and he landed on his feet next to Jon without so much as a jolt.

“What happened? I went on a walk. I found a girl who was going to die. I called over her parents. She lived. That’s it.” He pulled his hair out of its usual bun and shook it out, if only for something to do with his hands. “If you’re expecting some Grim Reaper horror story, sorry to disappoint.” 

He pushed past Jon and left the archives to go… somewhere. Anywhere that wasn’t these narrow shelves and dusty corners and concern mixed with curiosity without any clear sign which was stronger. 

As he left, he didn’t bother to pick up Martin’s stress ball. It wasn’t until he returned later that— that day? week?— _later_ to see it set carefully on the edge of the desk that used to be his that he realized how much he missed having a little thing to ground him. If this was a sign Jon intended to give him some space on the whole avatar business, then Tim would call it apology enough.

He didn’t hold out much hope.

* * *

The street he walked was… in London, probably. Definitely. He would have noticed if he left the city limits, of course he would have. 

A strange restlessness hung in his limbs these days. Coupled with the fatigue, it was driving him mad. Whenever he wasn’t shoving down spikes of irritation, he had to fight through clouds over his thoughts that left him staring off into space for long blocks of time. It never felt like long to _him,_ but finding out he’d been dead for six months hadn’t felt like long either. The vague unease on Basira’s and Daisy’s faces when they called his name however many times to grab his attention might’ve meant it was worth some concern, but the living had such a skewed sense of time. How long was an hour, really? A day?

Jon wouldn’t stop staring at him. Hell, that was probably why he was so irritable. Let a ghost have some privacy. Jesus.

That had to be why he walked so much, too. Anything to get away from those grey eyes following his every move, just waiting until they turned to silver and static and compulsion.

Ugh. 

He walked.

When his steps slowed next to some old book shop, the sign over the door announcing that it was closed for the night gave him little pause. There was something… something wrong. Yes. 

The door was locked, but with how much of a chore tangibility had become these days he might have had a harder time opening the thing than just stepping through. He crossed without hesitating to the stairs near the back and ignored the _EMPLOYEES ONLY_ sign. By the time he was halfway up, he caught a very weak voice crying for help — one he never would have heard from the street, or even from the shop below. 

It was only then, as he took the remaining steps two at a time with his heart in his throat, that he thought of the girl before. She, too, needed help. She was somewhere no one would have found her until it was too late.

Tim felt more clear right then than he had in ages. He could help. He could save this person. 

At the top of the stairs was a small flat, tidy with the faint dust of someone who had lived in the same place for a very long time. The same wheezing cry echoed out, softer this time, but he didn’t need it to feel the dulled life force through the walls. 

In the flat’s only bedroom was an older man, body splayed across the floor. On top of him lay a wooden bookshelf, and based on the chair nearby he must have been going something on top and overbalanced, taking the shelf down with him. His voice alone was proof that the fall had not been kind to his chest, not to mention the damage from whatever was on the shelf that tumbled down with him. 

As he dashed over and knelt to try and figure out what the hell he was going to do, the man looked at him with equal parts panicked confusion and absolute relief. 

“Who— Wh-who are—” 

Tim cut him off before he could try to gasp out more. “Name’s Tim. Here to help. Try not to think about it too hard.” 

He sat back on his heels and studied the shelf, reassurances tumbling out of his mouth the whole time. “You’re gonna be fine, yeah? I’m going to— to lift this. And then when it’s off you, I’ll call 999, okay? You’ll be alright.” He just needed to lift the shelf. Would’ve been easy when he was alive — he was fairly strong, and it didn’t look too heavy. Of course, that didn’t matter to the guy under it when gravity and inertia gave it all the force it needed and then some, but lifting it again wouldn’t have been an issue. 

All the muscle in the world didn’t mean much when your hands made contact with the reliability of a coin toss on a good day — and good days were getting less frequent all the time. 

It didn’t matter. It couldn’t. He just had to force his shaking hands to hold on and _move._

He stood and flexed his fingers as if the motion would make them real. “Okay. Okay. You ready?” The man on the ground, tear-streaked and terrified, only nodded.

Focused as he was, he managed to get a grip on the wood, but every second of contact felt like he was lifting a thousand pounds. His teeth gritted hard enough his jaw ached and every part of him felt frozen, but the gasp of relief below was enough to keep him stable. It had to be enough. If he dropped the—

He just… wouldn’t, then. He couldn’t.

He couldn’t, and when one hand went intangible without warning and dropped every bit of the thousand pounds on his other hand alone, he couldn’t let it matter. Even when he nearly cried out in pain as he strained every bit of _him_ left into lifting this g-ddamn shelf, it couldn’t, wouldn’t matter. 

“Come on,” he hissed to himself under his breath. “Come on, almost… almost there.” 

With a final heave and desperation shoved all into his shoulder to bear the incredible, implausible weight for the last stretch, it was upright. A fraction of awareness kept him on his feet instead of collapsing to the side — and, consequently, through the damn wall. It didn’t matter how shaky he was. It didn’t matter that his chest felt hollowed out. From the sound of his gasps and half-choked coughs, the man before him was far from out of danger.

Pinned to the ground, slowly wasting away, unable to call for help and knowing your demise was imminent? Bad.

Being freed by some random guy, only to puncture your lung because of a broken rib? Also not great. 

He went to kneel again, but came closer to collapsing to one knee. Hopefully, it wasn’t too obvious how exhausted he was. “I don’t have a— a phone with me. Do you have a landline?”

The man nodded. “Ki— Kitch—” 

“Kitchen, got it. Just… just breathe, yeah? You’re gonna be fine.”

Making actual contact with the phone hit him with a dizzy spell so strong he damn near crumpled, and the number of times he tried to press the 9 button only for his finger to go through the phone frustrated him so much he almost cried. He was _so close,_ and if he dropped the ball now he’d never forgive himself. 

Finally, blessedly, a woman’s voice came through. _“999, what’s your emergency?”_

“Ambulance,” he gasped out. “I’m at the, uh, the North Star book shop in—”

_“Hello? Is anyone there?”_

He pulled the receiver away in confusion, then put more force into his speech. Maybe it was like touch, and if he just tried _harder_ he could do it. “A-ambulance, please, at North Star books—”

_“Hello?”_

Shit. There wasn’t time for this. Phone in hand, he made his way back to the bedroom and crouched again without bothering to make himself opaque. Full disclosure time. 

“I’m really sorry about this, but I need you to talk. I’m a, uh… A ghost. And my voice doesn’t work on phones, apparently.” 

The man stared at him with eyes round as coins. His mouth moved like he wanted to speak, but no words came. 

“Like I said before, just… try not to think about too hard.”

_“Is anyone there? Hello?”_

The man started at the dispatcher’s voice, and managed to wheeze, “Ambulance!”

Tim slumped in relief, eyes closed. He stayed until the ambulance arrived, murmuring lowly that help was on the way in an attempt to keep the man calm, then slipped out between the ones rushing past on the stairs. Invisibility came with an ease he was far too tired to either question or appreciate. 

His hands shook. Close calls were bad for the nerves.

* * *

Basira didn’t look convinced.

“Doesn’t that seem kind of… optimistic?”

“Sorry?”

“You said something pulled you to those people, and you think it was something to do with your being an avatar. The entities, though — they’re made of _fear_ , or they create it, or whatever. I don’t know if that’s all there is to it.“

Tim folded his arms. “What, you want me to just let them die?”

“That’s not what I said.”

It was quiet in the tunnels. Being here still made Tim’s skin crawl, but Basira said she preferred to keep an eye on them when she wasn’t off following some lead or another. It wasn’t as if Tim had reason to worry about any hidden parasites, anyway. No skin to break. No muscle to chew through. No bone to scratch. No nerve endings to set on fire. 

So maybe he hated it down here more than he let on. He lived when he used them as a back entrance into the Institute, he’d be fine now. ...Though maybe, before, he was fine with it because getting eaten by worms again hadn’t seemed so bad when up against spending another day imprisoned.

Ugh. Depressing.

“Look, I don’t think the End wanting someone as a failsafe is such a hard thing to believe. Its whole thing is inevitability, right? So, if someone is in a position to die _before_ their intended time, why wouldn’t it keep around someone to make sure they live until whatever that time is?”

“Hm.” It did seem, at least, that Basira was genuinely thinking it over. “I don’t know.” 

“The first one was a _kid._ Her dads would have found her body if I hadn’t been there, or if I got there just a couple minutes later. Second one lived alone, and it didn’t seem like his place was set up for frequent visitors. He would’ve died from either starving in his room, or puncturing his lung with a broken rib.” Tim’s voice was quiet, but that didn’t detract from the slow-burning anger he’d had to shove back more often than not these days. “And you think they’re just meant to die like that.”

Basira, never shy to cord her own voice with steel, didn’t hesitate in her retort. “I think that your and my opinion on when a person is meant to die doesn’t matter much to the End. You try to save people. I don’t think you should stop. But,” she continued in a tone that brooked no argument, “I also don’t think that’s what’s going on. And I think you should be ready for when the rug gets torn out from under you.” 

Tim couldn’t believe her. One bit of potential good news — he kept these awful deaths from happening, that was a _good thing —_ and Basira just wanted to tear through it and find all the ways it might be some honeypot trap from his eldritch nightmare boss.

Well. His _new_ eldritch nightmare boss. Any such traps from the old one were pretty moot now that he was in prison, with one less Stoker in his employ. 

Without warning, his anger vanished and left him feeling cold. He was so tired these days, it wasn’t a surprise, especially when even alive his emotions often flipped in and out like light switches. He got pretty good at handling that despite how volatile it could be — pretty good until the archives, anyway. 

The thought of ringing up the therapist he went to in uni nearly made him laugh aloud. _“Hey, doc, it’s Tim Stoker! How’s the decade since my last visit been? Those tips you gave on centering myself were great stuff, really, but do you have anything that works on ghosts? Hypothetically.”_

Quieter, colder, he continued. “When I was with those people, I felt more like myself than I have in… in I don’t know how long. I felt present, and solid, there to help until they were out of danger and I could relax. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”

“I’m not saying it is.” She wasn’t gentle, no, but Basira was always steady. “I just don’t know if it’s a good thing, either.”

* * *

Dawn had yet to chase the last of the mist off the wide fields lining the road. The hollowness in his chest rang so thoroughly he was certain it would take little for him to dissolve into that mist and maybe, maybe be washed away in the sunrise.

It sounded peaceful.

He walked. There was somewhere he needed to be, and it was not in the cool, dark fields. 

Where was he? The road stretched long and empty, cracks running along the asphalt like veins. How far was he from his resting place?

It didn’t matter. He could find his way back again as soon as this work was taken care of. 

Exhaustion took root in his marrow, desperation twined through his flesh. Neither could truly stand against the numb weight of the inescapable. 

It made no sense for him to feel both weightless and indescribably heavy. Very little made sense these days. 

Trees dotted the sides of the road in irregular scatterings, and a handful of deer grazed in their shade. Dawn edged in gold and red over the horizon. If any breeze blew, he couldn’t feel it. 

Some distant part of him wondered if he should be concerned about how not-him he felt. Back at the resting place and the fog around it, he felt _him._ Here, he felt _not._ Did that matter?

A pointless question. Why would it? Him, not-him, nothing at all — his task didn’t change. 

For the first time in a span too long to remember and too short to matter, a car roared past. _There,_ there was that feeling on the paths carved into his chest, the one he knew was behind him and knew would meet him here. 

A deer leapt into the road, and Tim remembered his purpose. 

He was already running before the car swerved into one of the biggest trees, and the deafening scream of twisted metal only pushed him faster. 

By the time he reached the car, the woman inside was trying to lever herself into a vaguely upright position. The windshield was shattered but still in place, looking for all the world like a crumpled cellophane candy wrapper. Any hope he might have had of getting to her from her side of the car fled when he saw the state of the driver’s side door — or, the state of the visible half. The rest was thoroughly embedded into the tree trunk. 

Tim came instead to the passenger side, though despite its lack of damage it took more than a few tries to get a grip on the door handle. By the time he managed to open it, the woman had registered that he was there past her disorientation. Her features were still twisted in pain and confusion, but beyond that was a faint bit of hope. 

“Oh, my g-d,” she whispered past welling tears. “Please, I can’t— I can’t feel my leg, please—”

“It’ll be alright.” Tim pushed every scrap of energy he had into sounding confident and assured. “I saw your car swerve off the road, so I came over to help you out. You’re going to be fine, I swear.” 

Her face broke into desperate relief. “Thank you, thank you, thank you…” She reached for him, but as soon as her weight shifted she made a horrible, pained whimper. 

“Hey, woah—” Not good. He couldn’t pull her out of the car, not when he had no idea what sort of damage there was. Maybe her trying to pull herself free was what would have killed her. 

Keep her calm. He could do that. 

“You need to stay there, okay?”

_“What?”_ The word was mostly air, gasped around more confusion and tears.

“I’m going to find your phone and call for help, alright? You’ll be fine, we just need to wait until they get here. I’ll stay with you the whole time.” 

She didn’t reply, just stared at him with wide eyes. It was better than her continuing to try and rip herself free from the twisted metal around her, so Tim would take it. 

“My name is Tim, what’s yours?”

“R-Rebecca.”

“Alright, Rebecca, do you have your phone in the car?” 

The woman nodded slowly. “My purse is— is in the backseat. It’s in there.” Her breath was still too fast, but slowing. Progress. 

Reaching her small leather bag was easy. Getting his fingers around the strap was not. His teeth dug into the inside of his cheek as he forced himself to keep his movements slow and steady, with none of the frantic energy he had when in the other man’s flat. Panic would kill her. 

By the time he got his hand to connect with the phone inside and turned back around, the woman was staring at him with wide eyes. 

“Y-you’re…” Her voice was faint. “You’re see-through.”

Tim glanced down at himself, and — yep. Shit. He’d put all his focus into tangibility and totally forgot about his appearance. 

“Well. That makes this next part easier, then. I can’t use phones with my whole… situation. I’m going to need you to talk to the dispatcher, tell them where we are and that you need help, okay?”

She blinked at him. “Are you an angel?”

“Am I—?” As he looked over at her from where he was about to dial 999, he noticed the small cross on her necklace. Religious sort, then. The sort that would find the presence of something from their religion of choice comforting.

Oh, what the hell. He’d pretended to be all kinds of things he wasn’t to get to less public records when following up statements. “...Sure. Sure, let’s go with that.”

The woman’s lips trembled. “Are you here to take me?”

“Not at all. I’m here to make sure you stick around in the world a little longer.”

She nodded, slowly at first, then faster as if in resolution. The fear coloring her face and voice hadn’t left, but she wasn’t hyperventilating anymore. 

Like he had before with the man in the bookshop, he dialed 999 after some false starts. His hands were shaking, which didn’t help matters, but it was just an irritant. He was fine. He needed to be fine, at least until help came. 

Her arm shifted to take the phone, but as soon as it did she gasped. Her shoulder hung strangely, and though he couldn’t see her collarbone past her shirt he had no doubt it was broken. 

So he would hold it. That was fine. He’d hold the damn cell phone, and not think about how much focus it required to keep it there in his hand. Didn’t matter. He wasn’t the one crushed into the car, skin already turning a hundred different bruised colors. 

It was only when the call wrapped up that Tim realized he hadn’t processed any of it. He didn’t need to worry about street names or addresses, not when he was already here, but the knowledge that just holding an object was too much to allow even a conversation at the same time was disquieting. 

Must be the stress. He almost dropped the bookshelf on the old man before, and didn’t want to do the same here. That was all. 

He snapped out of his troubled thoughts when he heard the woman muffle another cry of pain as she tried to tug her leg free from the warped metal around it. 

“Hey, hey hey, it’s alright.”

“I can’t _feel it,_ I’m— I’m a gymnastics teacher, I _can’t—_ ” She started to cry again, her words looping and jagged. 

Tim would’ve given anything to be able to take her hand and give the simple comfort of touch. Anything.

“You’re going to be fine, okay? The paramedics are on their way, and they’ll know how to help. We just need to stay right here until then, yeah? They’ll know the best way to get you free so there’s as little damage as possible.” Talking. He could do talking. Stay calm, stay steady. “It’s going to be fine.”

She nodded even as fresh tears fell. The hand opposite her broken collar bone snaked up to grab her necklace, fingers flexing around the metal. 

“You’re a gymnastics teacher, you said?”

A little confused at the line of questioning, the woman looked over to him. “Y-yeah, I teach primary schoolers.”

“That sounds hectic,” he replied with a smile. “Do you have a lot of students?”

Some of the tension in her face relaxed as she thought. “There’s a handful, um, that have been coming for a long time, and I get a lot of sh-short term students.”

“Any acrobats in the making? Future high-drama cat burglars?” 

This drew out a short, halting laugh. “My son’s friend Sadie. She— she came into class once and told me I needed to teach her how to dodge through those, um, laser grids you see in old spy movies.”

“Oh, she sounds like a _treat.”_ Tim shook his head, still smiling. “I think I’d get along with her. Has she done anything else that makes you think she’ll be the next Bond villain?”

“Hah, well—” The woman grimaced as a wave of pain hit, but kept talking after another moment. “She roped Samwell into her April Fools’ prank this past year, it was r-ridiculous…” 

Tim wasn’t sure how long they talked. The words didn’t matter, not really. The sun had fully risen by the time he slipped away through the paramedics as they discussed their next move. He could tell the danger was passed. She would live. One more life saved, one more bit of proof Basira was wrong.

His hands shook. Relief, no doubt.

* * *

Tim hated the tunnels.

He also hated the dull blanket of _nothing_ that knit itself around him more and more often these days. Maybe fear thrumming in the back of his head wasn’t _pleasant_ , but with it there he knew who he was and where he stood. As he felt Jon’s life force grow closer at his back, the wash of stale anger that came with it grounded him further. 

Grounded through fear and anger. Lovely snapshot of his life right there. 

“Tim?” 

He didn’t reply, just lifted a semi-translucent hand in vague greeting. 

With a fair amount of grumbles, Jon levered himself down to sit on the other side of the step Tim had been taking up for— for a while. The clatter of his cane as he dropped it onto the stone between them echoed for far longer than what seemed natural.

Fucking tunnels. 

“Basira told me about your, ah… your travels.”

“And?”

“...And what?”

Tim didn’t look over at him, though he could feel the weight of Jon’s eyes fall heavy across his shoulders. “You’ve got some sort of theory about it all, right? I’m sure you’ve monologued about it plenty into some recorder or another.”

“Nothing concrete.” At least he didn’t try and deny it. Small blessings. “We don’t have much information right now.”

“You can’t just _know_? Magic it out of thin air?”

“By now you should know that that’s not how it works.”

Tim huffed a short, bitter laugh. “I don’t know how any of this works. My _patron,”_ he spat like the word was poison, “doesn’t bestow perfectly serendipitous insight at the drop of a hat.”

“As soon as mine does anything that helpful, I’ll let you know,” Jon replied, dry.

The laugh that drew from Tim was quieter, but more genuine. “Well, if you need more information: I came across another person. I was really out of it, I think, until her car swerved and hit a tree. Called emergency services, then stayed with her ‘til they arrived.” He leaned back with palms braced on the ground behind him. “Like the other two times, I felt off, then my head cleared once that person was in danger. I kept them alive, then I could relax some. Lose all that tension, you know?”

“You felt off, you said? How do you mean?”

“It’s not as bad as when I was walking here,” Tim explained. “But a similar feeling. Like, I know I need to go somewhere, but most other things are foggy.”

Jon’s head tilted in that _thoughtful scholar_ way Tim was certain he must have practiced in the mirror at some point. He’d put money on it. No one got an exact forty-five degree angle every time without some serious training. 

“You don’t seem foggy like that here. Or, you lose focus easily, but you never lose _yourself_ like you described on your initial walk.”

“Something about this place keeps me more present.” Tim didn’t bother to try and filter out the deep bitterness in each word. Not even death could unshackle him, it seemed. “Probably to do with being Eye-touched, and all.”

Jon considered that a moment, his lips moving silently around the phrase _Eye-touched_ as if sounding it out. “Where did you hear that?”

“What?”

“That doesn’t sound like a way you’d phrase having a connection to the Eye. Where did you hear it?”

“I-I don’t know. Nowhere, I think. Does it matter?”

“It might.” Jon chewed his thumbnail as he thought. “If that was… But that doesn’t make… Or….” 

Tim watched as each internal conversation shifted across Jon’s face in turn. He was an expressive guy, no matter how much he tried to shove his _serious professional_ face over it all. It could never hide the slight furrow between his brows when focused, or how wide his eyes got when he was startled. When something made him want to laugh but he thought it was unprofessional — or, just didn’t want to give Tim any encouragement — the corners of his mouth drew in like he was tying it closed. It didn’t take long knowing him for Tim to consider that as much of a success as laughter. 

The look in his eyes now matched the one he got when he was sure he was near a conclusion, and equally sure that it required him to stay after hours for the thousandth time no matter how much any friendly, very attractive, objectively hilarious coworkers told him to at least get some dinner before camping down for the night. 

Before Tim could even consider suggesting food like he had so many times before, Jon snatched up his cane and pushed himself to his feet. “I’ll be right— I need to check something, I’ll—” 

With only half-finished sentences in his wake, Jon hurried out of the tunnels, off to chase whatever thought stuck itself in his head.

“Great talk, boss,” Tim muttered to the tunnel. 

_Great talk, boss,_ the tunnel echoed back. 

Christ, he needed to get out of here for a while. He could go on another walk, maybe, and see if that pull came again. It’d be nice to feel some clarity that had nothing to do with this g-ddamn place.

* * *

The woods were lovely, dark, and deep.

What came next?

He knew those words, he did. From a poem. From one he read, back— back before. Minutes ago? Maybe. Years? Unsure. 

The woods were lovely, dark, and deep, and he had miles to go. Miles to go before— 

Miles to go. 

There wasn’t snow, not like the poem. Probably. Was there snow in the poem? Was there any here? There were trees, yes, and the ground was slick. Rain? Snow? Did it matter?

Pointless question. It didn’t. 

He didn’t wonder where he was. He was where he needed to be. When. There was a light coming this way. One that was meant to go dark. One that would not go dark. It wouldn’t. It wouldn’t. 

He couldn’t remember why that mattered, but it did. That light would not go out. He would before he would let this one, and he would never go out. Never. No matter what. 

Miles to go. Miles to go. The woods were lovely, dark, and deep. He had promises to keep. He had miles to go before— 

Why was he doing this? 

A strange thing to ask himself. Why did the world turn? Questioning the way of things didn’t change them.

Was it for penance? Peace? 

Yes. No. It didn’t matter. 

Promises to keep. That was why. Just like the poem, he had promises to keep. The light would not go out. He walked, his resting place behind with the bright point of the compass in the lowest levels and soft, cool mist in the upper. He walked, the paths carved into his being showing him what steps to take the moment before he did. They did not show him the destination, not before he got there. He didn’t need to know it. All he needed was the path and the knowledge that he had work to do. 

Why did he feel so empty? All the eggshell bits of him wanted to do nothing more than be still and rest until those too faded away. There was so little of him left, it wouldn’t be long. Away from the resting place, from the magnetic north and the rolling fog, there was nothing to bring him back into focus. No lens to clear his unsure eyes. No quiet to soothe the ache in his chest. Only the end. He was so tired.

It didn’t matter. Stopping was not an option no matter how much he wished for it. He had miles to go before he slept. 

The light drew near. Unlike the other times, the times when his purpose came close, things didn’t snap into place. No danger, maybe. No lights about to go out. No clarity. That was good. Maybe he could find the threat and prevent it from ever happening in the first place, keep that light on without so much as a flicker. 

He tried hard to think, he did, and see the— the woods? was it woods? — but there was nothing in him to hold comprehension together. Pain ripped through his head as he continued to try anyway, to pull more from empty reserves, but the only thing he gained for his trouble was a taunt of calliope and impossible warping lines at the edge of his vision. 

It _was_ vision, right? He saw? Did he have eyes? 

A voice came from the warm spirit so close to going cold. Cold. Yes. It asked if he was cold. _It’s been so chilly this spring,_ it might’ve said. _Don’t you have a coat?_ it might’ve asked. 

A ridiculous question, of course. There was no _him_ that could be cold. 

If he had a head, he might have shaken it. He wanted to respond, but what was the old saying about dead men telling tales? 

The light moved again. Further. Moved away, down this path, down the path that traced along his empty black veins and around his unbeating heart. No. No, the path was where the end came. He needed to prevent it. To stop it. The end of the line was near, but he could stop it. He could. He had promises to keep. He must.

There was no danger to act as a catalyst and snap reality back into place, but he couldn’t afford to wait. Not when every second counted. The others, the befores, the still lit, they kept burning but with scars down to the bone in payment. This time, he could force a crossroads earlier. Do it better. Move. Act. He would not, could not just watch. Not anymore. He was so, so sick of watching and witnessing and remaining as nothing but a bystander. 

He clawed together the cold fragments still left in him, refusing to wait for focus granted by collateral.

He— _Tim,_ his name was Tim, and he had promises to keep. 

The pounding in his head reached a crescendo as he turned on his heel and saw the retreating back of the woman he just passed. The one concerned for the well-being of a passing, half-conscious stranger. The one he could — damn Basira, damn Jon, damn Oliver, damn Terminus itself — save. 

Two steps. That was all the movement he had time for when the woman’s feet went out from under her, and she fell. 

If the rain hadn’t stopped, maybe she would have stayed home rather than taking a walk through the woods. If it had stopped much earlier, maybe the mud would have dried, not been so slick and dangerous. If it had stormed even more this season, maybe this trail, so close to a creek-lined ravine, would have closed. If it had stormed less, maybe the walls of that ravine would have kept solid, not crumbled further under the weight of a surprised, sharp impact. 

If Tim had been faster, maybe none of that would have mattered at all. 

He didn’t hesitate in vaulting over a rotting trunk and moving as fast as he could down the steep rock and dirt. It wasn’t as if he had to worry about keeping his footing. Even if he did, single-minded drive would have forced his steps just as much. 

A low, plaintive cry rang out, wracked with stunned pain, and the sound of it made Tim’s chest ache. Even then, it was nothing compared to the sight he came to at the bottom of the ravine.

Mud-slicked and already far too bloody she lay there. Her leg was clearly broken, in an angle so sharp and wrong it made Tim’s stomach turn. Far, far worse was the tear through her stomach, where the jagged edges of a storm-broken branch sprouted from just below her ribs.

There was no keeping calm and a smile here. There was no pushing down his desperate fear and showing no panic. There was only horror. 

No. No, he couldn’t let that be what stopped him. He couldn’t just _watch_ death, not again. His legs shook and his head pounded with calliope and hissing dread, but he would not simply bear witness. 

The woman’s hands splayed in the air around the branch pierced through her, as if she was trying to understand what it was. Her chest moved in short, hiccupping sobs. 

Stop. Think. He had a routine, and it worked so far. She must have her phone. He would call emergency services. They would come in time. She would be fine. A few nasty scars, maybe a limp, a little more trauma for the road. Nothing fun, but she would live. Tim was here, which meant he was supposed to keep her alive, which meant he would. He would. 

He fell to a knee right next to her, scanning her for what his first move should be. Blood loss meant you were supposed to elevate the feet, right? But with as horrible as that break was, that’d mean that much more pain and worsening that injury. Small price to pay for her life, if he could actually fucking _touch_ her. 

“I’m here, I’m here to help, okay?” Her eyes snapped to him, wide and rolling, but like she was hanging on to every word. “I’m going to— _dammit_ , I-I’m going to help get you out of this, I swear. You’re going to be fine.” 

And — shit, he didn’t see a purse or bag. He’d just have to ask.

“I’m going to call for help, okay, but I need to use your phone.” He spoke slowly, trying his best to keep his voice clear and level. The tightness in his throat didn’t help, but trying not to cry was far from his biggest concern right then. “Can you look at where it is so I can find it? Don’t try to talk, okay?” 

She didn’t nod, but her eyes darted down to her jacket, on the right side, and one violently shaking hand flinched towards the pocket there.

“You’re doing really well, alright, just stay calm. It’s going— It’s going to be okay.” 

Tears traced through the mud on the woman’s face, her pale skin growing paler as each second passed. Blood trickled down her temple. Her eyes locked up on the ash-colored clouds above. 

Tim needed to reach in her pocket and get the phone. Two steps. One point of contact. He could do it. He could. The void in his chest rang hollow and his hands no longer looked like they belonged to him, faint and shaky. It felt like he was holding every nonexistent cell in his body together one by one, and every motion pushed through concrete air as he forced his fingers around the whole weight of the sky in a small rectangle of plastic and glass.

A small, shattered rectangle. 

Dented, bent. The screen didn’t so much as flicker. 

His whole being froze. No. No, this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. No, he had promises to keep. He swore to her. She would live. She would live. She needed to live. 

The low keening noise from the woman snapped him out of the empty desperation pounding in his skull. She didn’t even seem to notice the shattered phone, only the fresh wave of agony that rolled over her. 

“Shit— okay, okay. I’m going to— to find some help, alright, I swear I’ll be right back—”

There was no one nearby. He didn’t have to so much as stand to know there was no life close. 

What else could he do?

As soon as he said he was leaving, the woman’s eyes snapped over to him in sheer panic. “St… St...ay.” Her voice choked out through thick tears and pain, and each sound ripped the emptiness inside Tim that much wider.

He didn’t respond, only stared with wide, wet eyes, and her hand scrabbled across the reddening ground between them. “D… dn’t… wa-ant… Not… not alone.”

How could he deny her that? 

“Okay,” he whispered. “You’re— you’re going to be fine, alright?” 

The way her eyes bored into him made him shake. She didn’t watch him with hope, or doubt, but absolute, desperate trust; like if she listened with all her energy, some collection of words would stop the pain. 

“You’ll be alright. It’s going to be okay, I promise.”

Her fingers weakly flexed and dug into the ground, leaving shallow furrows in their wake. 

Miles to go. The woods were lovely, dark, and deep, and he had promises to keep. 

“It’s going to be fine, I swear. You’re going to be just fine.”

The tendons in her hand stood in sharp relief as she reached for him, straining to take a hand she could never touch.

It wasn’t fair. Not now, not after everything. 

The scarf she wore lay in tatters around her, bloodsoaked and frayed, but it would serve his purposes. With every shivering piece of him still left, he poured all he could into one hand, then slipped it under the tail of her scarf. There was nothing of him that remained except hollow promises and the trembling, brittle fingers twined with his own. Thin yarn and blood gave his hand shape, and though he couldn’t feel her touch through the scarf, fresh tears fell and landed where their hands met. Hers, his, it didn’t matter. 

She tried to smile, red-stained teeth in brutal contrast against her ashen skin. He had nothing left in him, nothing, nothing, but still scraped enough of himself away to return the smile. He couldn’t imagine how she might find comfort in such a twisted, horrible thing, but from the way her chest shuddered and hand flexed he thought she was grateful. 

“It’s okay. It’s okay. You’ll be fine. Everything is going to be fine, yeah?” 

Slowly, slowly, light faded. Slowly, slowly, the cries went quiet. Slowly, _so_ slowly, her hand slipped out of his.

The silence as her heart stopped fell sharp in his chest. Along with it came a grief so heavy he thought he might drown, and deep, cold dread.

Dread, because his hands did not shake now.

Dread, because he no longer felt so empty. 

Dread, because he had miles to go. His promises were not made to the living, and he would not ever sleep.

* * *

Tim didn’t want to think about how easy it was for him to touch the handle to Jon’s office door. He didn’t have to make a half dozen attempts. He didn’t have to narrow his entire being to the skin of his hand in effort to make it real. He didn’t struggle against the weight of reality itself to turn a small bit of metal. 

No, it was so easy he didn’t have to think twice, and that alone meant he could think about nothing else. 

The blood he remembered staining his hands where the woman held so weakly was gone, and for some reason that hurt most. There should have been proof. Evidence. 

Jon looked up from his desk in mild irritation. As soon as he saw who’d interrupted him, his face shifted to confusion. “Tim? What happened, you look— Oh. _Oh.”_

Was he going to finish that with _like hell_ or _better?_ Christ, Tim didn’t want to know. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” His voice ground out of him, so ragged it made his throat burn with distant pain. 

No. No, this was not pain. He had never felt pain, not like the woman whose last moments he was certain would never leave his head. 

Jon straightened in his chair. “Tell you what?” It sounded more like a statement than a question, like he knew exactly what Tim meant and only needed to hear him say it. 

Behind the pain too weak to be true pain tore a blaze of rage. It burned too, but in a hurt he could stoke rather than just survive. 

“That I was never meant to be keeping people alive. That if you feed your patron by reading some old horror stories, I feed mine by sitting back and just letting people suffer and die.” His hands curled into tight fists at his sides and there was so _much_ building in him he might explode. 

“I didn’t know for certain.” Still, Jon stayed calm, and that only made Tim more furious. How the hell could he be calm about this? “I knew there was probably more, but beyond that I only had theories.” 

“Didn’t want to share with the class, then? Didn’t want to _warn me_ that it was all pointless? That I could try as hard as I damn well pleased, push through all the emptiness and confusion to _save_ people, and in the end I was going to watch someone bleed out eventually? You just let me keep fucking _deluding_ myself and thinking I had some noble purpose, but it was all for nothing!”

“What did you want me to say?” Some frustration sparked in Jon’s eyes, frustration that he had no damn right to. Not for this. “Did you want me to stop you next time you wandered out of the Institute and say, _try letting this person die, just to see what happens — maybe that will be what grounds you again!”_

“Anything! You could have said anything!” People could probably hear them all throughout the Institute with how Tim was shouting. It didn’t matter. 

Jon’s voice went tight in a clear sign of restraint, like Tim was a petulant child throwing a tantrum. “I’m well aware of how little you want my opinion on things you’ve decided you have to do; I had no reason to think that’d changed.” 

“This is different, you know it is!” Hands on Jon’s desk, he leaned in. How could he not understand? “You watched me fade like this for— for weeks! And you knew that I was tied to the End, so keeping people alive was never going to be what it wanted, but you still just let me wander around in complete denial!”

Finally, Jon pushed himself to his feet with cold, clear eyes. “I am _not_ who you’re angry at, Tim, so if you’re looking to get out some aggression you can shout at someone else.”

Tim’s shoulders released none of their tension, his fists stayed just as clenched, but he drew back by a degree. “Well…” His voice was hollow. “If the concept of death itself shows up for me to shout at, you let me know.”

The silence around them felt emptier without Tim’s anger to fill it to bursting. That anger was far from gone, but now it folded on itself and turned inward.

“We should talk, though.” Quiet sympathy replaced the sharpness in Jon’s eyes, and his soft tone scraped against Tim like sandpaper. How could Jon be gentle with him, knowing what he did? Who Tim was now? _What_ he was? “All of us, I mean. Basira will want to be a part of this.” 

Tim sank into the chair across from Jon’s desk without reply as Jon left. In some amount of time he couldn’t even begin to track he returned with both Basira and Daisy in tow.

“If you want to say, _I told you so_ ,” Tim muttered as Basira leaned against the wall across from him. “Now’s your chance.” She didn’t reply, and as usual her face was schooled well enough Tim couldn’t tell what she was thinking. 

Jon cleared his throat. “So, to summarize.” He paused before continuing to give Daisy a half-hearted glare when she perched herself on the corner of his desk. She raised an eyebrow as if daring him to challenge it, and he sighed. None of them commented on the recorder whirring away.

“Tim has been pulled by the End to the near-death experiences of three people, in which he intervened in order to prevent their death. Over that period his sense of self has gotten increasingly less stable, similarly to how he described just after returning to the living world. It’s safe to assume that this is how his avatar-related hunger manifests.”

_Hunger_. Tim couldn’t hide a wince at that. Way to make him sound like a vampire, Jon. Inevitable with a name like Stoker, but Jesus. 

“At the most recent… encounter, injuries were too severe and the location too isolated for him to successfully intervene, and the woman passed away.”

“Mallory.”

Jon snapped out of lecture mode. “What?”

“Her name was Mallory Joseph.”

“Did she… tell you that?” Said with all the confusion of a man who _knew_ how bad the damage was and how little she’d been able to speak.

“No.” A sharp outbreath was as close as Tim could get to bitter laughter. “I just _know._ ”

Jon wrote down the name on a bit of paper near him. “Do you know any others?”

“...No. The first, I know someone shouted her name at one point, and another one told me, but… I don’t remember them.” 

Bad to worse. Christ.

“Ms. Joseph, then. After her death, Tim came back to himself in entirety despite being outside the Institute, which had previously served as something of a focal point.” He paused. “Am I missing anything?”

It was strange to hear hell described so neatly. Tim shook his head. 

“Would you like us to try and get in touch with Ms. Joseph’s family?”

“And tell them what?” Tim replied, incredulous. “That her death was for no reason besides being in the wrong place at the wrong time? That she suffered, and it was _awful?_ You might like knowing things, Jon, but to the rest of us knowing someone you love spent their last moments in agony isn’t a g-ddamn picnic.”

Jon didn’t bristle at Tim’s harsh tone, which was almost enough to piss him off again. “Alright. Alright, then. We’ll be sure to alert local police and leave it at that.” To the room, he continued. “I think we can conclude that his role as an avatar is to be present for the end of a person’s life. To… to watch.”

Eye-touched. Meant to watch. 

Good g-d, he wanted to _scream._

“So what now?” said Daisy.

Basira didn’t hesitate. “What now is, Tim stays in the Institute. He can keep himself together here, and won’t get possessed by his entity to go watch someone die.”

“You saw how bad he was getting even here,” Jon argued. “Yes, he knew who he was, but he was still fading. Who’s to say that it wouldn’t get just as bad even if he stayed?” 

Fading. If only. 

He didn’t look away from the wood grain of Jon’s desk. It felt like they were talking about someone else. This couldn’t be him. This couldn’t be his existence. His eternity. If he had breath, it would’ve come faster at the thought, but due to the only bit of luck he had left, there was no movement to give away his slow-building panic. 

Forever. Eternity. Miles to go. 

“Do you Know that, or is that just a guess?”

“It’s— it’s an _educated_ guess based on what we know about how being an avatar works—“

“So you don’t know for sure. Maybe he gets a little transparent, but that’s better than taking sustenance from people’s deaths.”

_“Or_ he starts starving again, and then leaves anyway without any idea who or where he is.”

Basira and Jon’s argument sounded like it was coming through six feet of earth between them and him. Something burning cold took root deep inside. 

He could still feel Mallory’s eyes on him. 

“We don’t know that. Better to play it safe and keep him here for now, and if anything changes deal with it as it comes.”

“Deal with it _how?”_

Chained and trapped all over again. Prisoner of his own undeath. Ultimate price over and over for something he never even wanted.

Mallory leaned over to try and catch his attention from where she sat across from him. Still, Jon and Basira argued. 

“Tim,” Mallory said in a voice that sounded just like Daisy. “You with us?”

With us? No, no. Only the living could be there. How was Mallory there, then? Did he save her after all? 

The memory of her wounds hit so strongly he could almost feel the tear through his own gut. No. No, he did not save her.

The pale skin and dark hair sitting on the desk were not Mallory. Her eyes had burned into him in shades of green, and the ones studying him now were brown as earth. Daisy. Daisy was here and alive, not trapped and alone with only the comfort of one no longer human. 

“Shove the argument,” DaisyMalloryDaisy said over her shoulder, not looking away. “He’s really out of it right now, give ‘im a minute.”

“Already?” Tim didn’t look up, but he thought he could hear a trace of concern in Basira’s voice. Wondering when he was going to wander off for his next victim, no doubt. 

“Not hunger.” Daisy looked him over. “Just trauma.”

When he managed a hoarse reply, it surprised even him. “You sure?”

She only hesitated a moment to study his eyes. “Yeah.” 

The room went quiet as Tim struggled to sit further upright, rather than the half-slumped position he’d slipped into. 

“Look,” Jon said after a moment. His voice had lost the defensive tone he’d picked up during the argument. “Him being there doesn’t cause any deaths. Whether he goes or not, people die. Turning the concept of death itself into some moral quandary on him alone doesn’t make sense.”

Basira folded her arms. “That’s not the problem. People die, but taking sustenance from it… It feels wrong.” 

“There’s a middle ground we can find,” Jon told her. “Like— like my reading old statements, rather than hearing them direct from subject.”

Finally, Tim looked at him. He didn’t hold much hope, but if there was even the chance of an answer he wanted to know. 

“If someone is dying of an accident like the people you’ve mentioned so far, then trying to help is reasonable. If someone is dying of natural causes or if it otherwise seems like it’s… their time, you stay back.”

“That’s a hell of a choice for one person to make,” Basira said.

“Well, until we find an alternative it’s the choice we’re stuck with.”

A clumsy attempt at solidarity, and not one Tim much appreciated. “If _I_ just watch them die,” he cut in, unable to help the emphasis _._ “And don’t try to help at all… How am I not complicit in their death?”

Neither Jon nor Daisy spoke. Both of them carried their own demons, he knew, and they were no strangers to self-blame.

To his faint surprise, it was Basira who responded. “That’s stupid.”

“What?”

“That doesn’t make sense. I don’t like you taking sustenance from people’s death, that doesn’t mean you’re killing them. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do.” 

He had nothing to say to that. Sure, it might be the case for others, but he was connected to the entire concept of death now. If anyone could stop senseless deaths, it should be him. He should be able to finally be more than a witness.

The calliope was back. 

“Look,” Daisy said. “We can talk in circles all day, but it’s a waste of time. Facts are: Tim isn’t killing anyone. His position as an avatar means he watches people die.”

Her words were simple. Clean. Tidy, like splintered bone and ruptured skin were not. 

“He’s going to try and help some people. Some people will die anyway.”

_He’s going to try and fail,_ is what she did not say. He didn’t need her to for him to hear it.

“At the end of the day, him hunting doesn’t hurt anyone. It saves some people. Track record of three out of four right now.” 

Christ, did she have to describe it as _hunting?_ Hunger, hunting, people dying to sate him. It was so much, too much, and his head pounded with organ music. He leaned forward in the chair he couldn’t feel to run a hand over his face, fingers pressed against his eyes as if blocking out the world would make it cease to exist. 

He swore he could still hear her faint cries twined in with each piping note. Mallory Joseph, died of blood loss through severe trauma to the abdomen, age 26, brittlebone fingers fragile twisted with his, the knit between them not enough to cushion his sharp, cutting grip. 

“Wh— He’s bleeding, what’s—”

“Shit— he did this before when he first came. Tim? Tim, listen to me, you’re— Wait, that’s not the injury he had before. Jon, what’s—”

_“Ohh,_ no…”

He didn’t need to open his eyes. Jon’s soft horror was enough for him to know exactly what had happened, along with pain he felt in a strange, distant way. 

He didn’t need to open his eyes, but he did. He didn’t get to hide from this. 

Everything from the lower half of his ribs down to his thighs was blood. He couldn’t see the mess of his leg, but he knew it was _wrong._ Numbness clouded it all. The words he spoke felt like they came from another person’s mouth, and he was helpless to do anything but watch. 

“It’s how she died.”

He couldn’t take this. Not now, not being scrutinized, not here. Forcing himself to stand wasn’t easy when his body was still certain it had weight, and that the break couldn’t take it, but its protest felt as distant as the pain. As distant as the voices of the others in this room. The ones put in danger by his very presence, whose closeness made them potential collateral, whose fatal wounds he refused to cause or carry. 

It wasn’t as if any of them could stop him. If they tried, he didn’t know. All he knew was that they were alive, he was not, and he carried death on himself like a brand. 

He could save no one, not really, but the calliope was his alone. Even if they knew the truth, he would not make them share in it.

* * *

Finding the predestined path that tugged him along was both easier and harder when he knew where he was going.

Not _where,_ no. When. He didn’t know the destination itself, but he knew what waited at the end. Fighting each step didn’t make sense, not when there was nothing more natural than death — but was that _him_ that believed that, or was that the End influencing his thoughts? Would it be better to stop where he was and wait for the pull to fade? If he found the strength, to turn and walk away?

He couldn’t. Not when it might end up like the befores, the still lit, the ones who lived. 

Was _that_ from the End? Was it the sort of mental hoops someone built for themselves to justify their denial? Was his search for some possible good in this just a way for it to get into his head and break down his walls until he was another cold specter that’d fit in any statement?

No. No, he couldn’t let himself get twisted up in indecision. Too long of that and he’d end up back as the fading, starving ghost that wandered around looking for the near-death without any idea what was going on. Maybe it was some string of manipulations, but that didn’t seem like the End’s play. 

His choice to try and save people, then, must be his own. They would die someday, of course. He couldn’t stop death wholecloth and didn’t intend to, but some deaths were too much. Too unfair. Too painful. Too alone. 

He might’ve been hired on as part of the End’s corner of hell, but just because he worked for someone, that didn’t mean he had to do everything how they wanted him to. 

_Un-died doing what I loved,_ he thought with some distant humor. _Pissing off my shitty eldritch boss._

His destination was close, he could tell that much. Without that disquieting haze over his thoughts he could tell he was in Newham, some old grimy side street, so late at night it was early. The specifics didn’t matter. He was when he needed to be. 

Further down the road, distant enough he could barely make them out, were two figures. They stood together near an Underground station entrance, one loomed over the other in clear anger.

Steep set of stairs. Low light. Argument. Imminent death. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what was going to happen.

If he disrupted the row, then maybe they’d move somewhere less prone to broken necks. He couldn’t have cared less what they were fighting about. Whatever it was, it didn’t need to end up in someone dead.

When the larger figure smacked the smaller one hard enough they nearly fell over, that thought turned on a dime. Watching some asshole murder their partner wasn’t high on his list of exciting ways to spend his afterlife. He didn’t choose to stop it, because that implied there was another option. 

The larger one grabbed the smaller’s arm even as they struggled to pull away. 

“I’m not fucking going home with you anymore, Al! I’m _done!”_ As Tim got close, he could hear the angry heat in the smaller one’s voice even as they held their free hand over what would no doubt end up as a black eye. 

The big guy yanked his ex-partner’s arm and drew them closer. Tim wasn’t sure how he’d pull the fucker off without being able to touch him, but he’d figure it out — long enough the other person could get away, if nothing else.

“Mira, baby, stop pulling this shit. You always throw these stupid fits, just _shut up!”_ He shoved his hand in his pocket and pulled out a switchblade.

Before Tim could do more than snatch up an old bottle left next to a bin, the smaller figure flinched hard enough they jerked out of the man’s grip. In a clumsy, broad motion, they shoved him as hard as they could, and big guy went down the Underground stairs with all the grace of a sack of bricks.

Huh. No, Tim was pretty alright with that. No intervention needed. 

The other figure froze and stared down the stairs for a long moment, then backed away slowly before turning and pelting down the road. 

Tim went invisible as they passed — probably wouldn’t be great for their nerves if some other big guy accosted them after all that, even if he only wanted to make sure they were alright. No, his job was here. Shithead at the bottom of the stairs wasn’t dead yet.

He didn’t bother to hurry down. Let this guy savor all his bruises and broken bones. He deserved every bit and more, no doubt. When he reached the bottom, hands comfortably in his pockets like he was just out on a stroll, seeing that the man fell onto his own knife almost made him laugh. 

Good. He hoped it hurt like hell.

For a minute, he leaned against the grungy wall and watched. Asshole grabbed at the knife handle — smart enough to not pull it out, shame — and processed whatever shock came with a sudden influx of karma. 

It wasn’t long before the man noticed him watching and called out. 

“H-help, shit, help me!” He sounded pathetic. 

Tim looked him over again. Definite broken arm, knife deep in his side. Hell of a concussion. Left ankle was messed up, too. This time of night, others finding him wasn’t likely. 

“No,” Tim replied pleasantly. “Don’t think I will.” 

The man stared at him without comprehension. “What— what the fuck?! C-call 999!”

He pushed off the wall to lean over the man with a wide smile. Whatever he did on the walk to the Institute, whatever face sent those people screaming back to their car, he pulled on it hard _._ Blood dripped from grating knifeclaw teeth and his eyes burned. His veins felt like they ran with acid, and he dug into that pain.

“No. Chance. In. _Hell.”_

After a moment of thick horror, the man’s mouth twisted open into what was no doubt meant to be a scream. That wouldn’t do. Screaming meant someone might come to help. 

A stroke of luck meant one of the bits of litter nearest to Tim was an old newspaper insert. It took no effort for him to manifest enough to get his shoe under it, then use the physicality it gave him to kick the man in the head, _hard._ More times than he needed to, probably. No less than this fucker deserved.

By the time his veins no longer burned and blood no longer coated his mouth, the man was unconscious. Maybe comatose with how hard Tim had struck, but he wouldn’t live long enough for the difference to matter. Not like Tim would lose any sleep over it. He sat back and waited as blood pooled on the concrete. 

At 4:06 AM, Alastor Campbell, age 31, died of blood loss and blunt force trauma to the head. 

World was better for it.

* * *

Though he was still learning the others, when Tim felt a life hovering near Jon’s magnetic north it was safe to assume that was where he’d find Daisy. There was none of Melanie’s knife-sharp impatience or Basira’s solidity, and even if he wasn’t able to identify Martin himself with ease, the fog around him was hard to miss. Besides that, Daisy spent a lot of time around Jon these days. It was a little strange considering Tim was pretty sure she was the one responsible for the slash-mark scar across Jon’s throat, but it wasn’t like Tim could judge the way people changed. 

He turned into a ghost. She learned some people skills (though, if Jon was her teacher, not many). They’d all been through some things. 

The way she reacted to being startled was unlike anyone he’d seen yet — and considering how many walls he jumped out of at other Institute staff, he had plenty to compare her to. She didn’t flinch, and her eyes didn’t widen. Her head whipped around to the door as he walked through, every muscle tense and eyes narrowed. Ready to pounce. If he had to guess, it was instinct after being tied to the Hunt for so long.

Good. Exactly what he wanted to talk to her about. 

In the heartbeat it took for her to analyze the new arrival and decide it wasn’t a threat, Jon didn’t lose focus on the book he was staring daggers at. Every so often he would look up to glare at a nearby map like it had personally wronged him, then back to the book. Tim could see him mumbling to himself from across the room. Three different notebooks filled the rest of the desk space, each opened to what seemed like a random page, and Jon had a pen behind his ear and two pencils in his haphazard ponytail. 

“Sorry,” Tim said once Daisy registered that he wasn’t some new danger. “You get him to eat something before he turned on hyperfocus mode?” She nodded with one part fondness, four parts exasperation, and they shared a quick moment of solidarity in the heavy task of making sure Jon Sims didn’t work himself to death no matter how good an effort he gave it. 

“Wasn’t sure when you’d be back,” she said after the moment passed. “Jon told us not to worry about it, but he also says to trust whatever Martin and Lukas are doing, so.”

“How long’s it been?”

“Six days.”

Yeesh. Time. Wandering off for damn near a week after _all that_ was probably concerning. To them, anyway. 

“Well, I’m back now. …Can we talk?” 

She raised an eyebrow but didn’t protest. The confusion was fair — it wasn’t like they really knew each other. Before the Unknowing he avoided everyone and there wasn’t an excuse better than “murderous cop”, and even after Jon swan-dived into the _g-ddamn Buried_ to pull her out, they weren’t around each other much. It would be awkward, yes, but as far as he knew she was the only one who would understand this. 

Daisy didn’t bother to shut the door to Jon’s office quietly as they stepped out into the archives proper, but it wasn’t as if Jon had noticed any bit of their exchange, or Tim's presence. Hell, he might not even notice that anything at all happened after Daisy returned. 

Tim leaned against a shelf with his arms folded across his chest. Against the wall, Daisy mirrored him, though she had the excuse of muscle atrophy rather than his plain discomfort. 

_Bite the bullet, Stoker._

Bad choice of words, maybe. Christ, this was not the time.

“You’re— You _were_ an avatar of the Hunt, right?”

Daisy looked at him for a long beat. “...Yeah, why?”

“And when you were doing all,” Tim vaguely waved his hand, _“that,_ some of the people you hunted were— were bad. Things that hurt others.”

“Right.”

“And when they—”

“Ask me what you want to ask me, not whatever leading questions you think will get me to read your mind.”

Tim paused. “Right. Right, sorry.” The words wouldn’t come. He wasn’t even sure what he was looking for here. This was stupid. This was stupid, he should go.

“You kill someone?”

Any excuses and subsequent escapes fled Tim’s head. “What? What, no! No, I didn’t kill someone!” 

“You’re a death avatar and you’re out here asking me about hunting,” she replied with her head cocked. She must have taught Basira how to keep such a solid poker face. “S’a fair assumption.”

Hard to argue, there. “Okay, well, I didn’t.”

“So what _did_ happen, then?” 

“I…” Jesus, this was like pulling teeth. Get it over with. “I followed another— pull, I think is how we’ve been describing it. It was a couple, or ex-couple or whatever, just outside an Underground entrance. Guy was pulling this person by the arm, trying to get them to go home with him, all that. I knew it was one of them going out, but I didn’t know which. I assumed it was the second person after the guy hit them across the face and pulled a knife.” 

That anger that’d welled in his chest the first time he saw it returned and hummed in place of a heartbeat. “I started running over to intervene when the one he was beating on pulled away and pushed him down the stairs.”

Daisy made a small noise of satisfaction at that. Tim concurred.

“So I went to see his— his last moments.” There was no grief in this death, but the thought of what he did and why still felt strange. He didn’t let himself linger. “I let him see me, and when he told me to get help I said no. Then freaked him out with the bloody horror look when he tried to argue, and when he went to scream I, uh… I kicked him in the head a few times. ‘Til he passed out.”

“And, what, you feel guilty about all that?”

“Honestly?” He took a moment to examine himself in case there was anything he missed. “I don’t. I didn’t then, don’t now.”

“Sounds like the bastard had it coming to me.” There was a slight smile on Daisy’s face. 

“Dying, sure, but…” But the death would have happened anyway. This was different. “I didn’t need to scare him. I didn’t need to hurt him more. He was going to die either way. I did that because I wanted to, and honestly? I— I enjoyed it.” He forced himself to look her square in the eye. “This guy deserved his death and there’ll be more who do too, but other people won’t. I don’t ever want to enjoy that. How do I know if I start to cross the line?”

The quiet after his question wasn’t a judgemental one, only thoughtful. Daisy ran a hand through her scraggly hair. 

“You really think I’m the best person to ask about that?”

“I think you’re the only person to ask. You and Jon are the only other avatars around here, and there’s not really any situation when turning someone’s trauma into a martini is good. Some things you hunted, though, they hurt people. Some of the ones I let die, they hurt people. Following that part of our, I dunno, patron? It does some kind of good.”

Not long after they transferred to the archives, he and Martin got to know each other through a weekend binge of _Lord of the Rings,_ and saying all the nonsense about _avatars_ and _patrons_ made him feel like he was reading lines from a rejected screenplay draft. That, plus some less racist Lovecraftian horror for flavor. Real nerd shit. 

Damn, he’d have to run a theory by Martin later — was avatar-ship the same as carrying the Ring? He’d lose his mind. 

“How do I find the line between actual good and justifying whatever I want to do?” 

Daisy studied him like she was piecing him apart. The scrutiny was uncomfortable, but if she could see where Tim ended and the End began, he wouldn’t complain.

“There’s a rush that comes with holding someone’s life in your hands,” she said after a long moment. “You can feel their blood, you can feel yours, and you know one of them is going to stop. And you know it won’t be yours. When it’s survival mode, that’s— good. It means you make it out. When you go looking for it, and push people into survival mode so you can feel that rush again…” She rubbed her arms and chewed her chapped lower lip. “That’s when you fall.”

“Sure, okay.” Tim thought for a moment. “Any advice that’s less, uh, blood? And life? Considering I don’t really have those anymore.”

“Bloodstain by where the coffin used to be says different.”

He winced. “I think it’s just _my_ wounds that actually bleed, not the— the others. Not sure, not eager to test.”

“Fair.” It was another moment before Daisy continued, but Tim didn’t mind. He couldn’t imagine translating something as heavy on blood and life as the Hunt to something like the End was easy. “Don’t lose yourself to your instincts. Don’t forget why you’re there. Don’t keep too many secrets.”

“What do you mean, secrets?”

Daisy shrugged. “I didn’t tell Basira about most of my hunts, and she didn’t ask. If we talked about it, she would’ve had to hold me accountable. I dodged questions, she let me.” The poker face was gone, leaving only a blend of warmth and regret. “She doesn’t hold back on questions now. Less with me since I don’t— I don’t hunt anymore, but Jon gets them. You’ll get them too.”

“That’s fine.” Part of Tim shied away from talking about anything to do with what he did as part of the End, but he had never been much for secrets. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”

“Keep it that way.” With that, Daisy gave him a short nod and ducked back into Jon’s office. No more feelings-talk from her, it seemed. 

Tim could have followed her lead and left, but he knew that’d be the wrong call. If he was here anyway, he should make the first move. In for a penny, in for a pound, all that. Tick two difficult conversations off his to-do list. 

Rather than wait for Basira to find him and throw down whatever questions she had, he went to her. Daisy was the one whose situation as an avatar was closest to his, and she trusted Basira’s judgment. Tim figured he could do worse than the one who’d reasoned her way out of the Unknowing. 

When he found her deep in the library and gave her the same story he did Daisy, she had none of the same clear satisfaction at Al Campbell’s inglorious end, but she didn’t look too heartbroken either. 

“He was going to die with or without you. Injuries like that, I don’t think you would have been able to get him an ambulance quickly enough.” She glanced at him out of the corner of one dark eye as she reshelved the book she’d been leafing through before his interruption. 

In a moment so brief he almost missed it, Basira steeled herself, then turned to face him in full. “You haven’t killed anyone yourself. So far, that’s not how it works. That might change.” Her face was like stone, and her voice was even harder. “If you do start killing people for any reason besides keeping others safe, I _will_ find a way to put you down, ghost or not.” 

For a moment he could only blink at her, then, bizarrely even to himself, he smiled. It wasn’t a grin, just a small upturn at the corner of his mouth. “Is it weird that I’m grateful?” 

“...Yeah, kind of.” She hid her surprise like a champion, but he was starting to get an idea for her tells. 

“It’s just that… I know what it’s like when one of these things ruins your life. Things like— like me.” Christ, he really was one of them. One more monster taking sick joy in a person’s fear. Think about it later. “I don’t ever want to be the reason someone goes out like I did.”

Basira considered that before replying. “You don’t need me to tell you anger and adrenaline are easier than grief. If those are what’s keeping you going right now, fine. But you don’t lose yourself to them. Keep your head clear. If you think you’re slipping, you _say something.”_

Maybe knowing there was someone this ready to go full Ghostbusters should have upset him, but no. He knew how it felt to be consumed by anger and adrenaline in a desperate effort to survive grief. As long as he was still Tim Stoker, he would not cause that in someone else.

* * *

In the assumedly uncomfortable hospice chair, Tim could scrounge up no anger. When the monitor’s steady rhythm went quiet in favor of a long, single drone, it brought no adrenaline. There were no living souls to know or care as the light of Rami Heaton, age 68, went out, and Tim had no shield from his grief.

* * *

Tim could have wandered off from the Institute, always able to find his way back. He could have haunted the tunnels below, knowing whatever might be down there couldn’t hurt him. He could have floated up to lounge on top of some bit of furniture far too flimsy to take the weight of someone his size. He could have turned invisible and wandered wherever he pleased. 

He could have gone unseen in more ways than he could count on both hands, but there was something decidedly human about sitting alone in an unused hall. Maybe, if he stared at the off-white wall across from him long enough, he could finally process at least one bit of the horror show that was his undeath. 

Not likely, but still. Points for effort. 

Though he still didn’t quite know how to control it, he did his best to rein in the sense that outlined every living soul in the building. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to think about where Jon was (in the archives, of course, and if Tim was triangulating it right, hunting through the oldest files), or Martin (holed up in his office, the fog there dense enough to mean that Peter must be there too), or Basira (just outside the tunnels with Daisy, likely working through Daisy’s physical therapy exercises), or _any_ of them (José and Lupita and Rosie and William and Hannah and Ben and on and on until his head might explode with it all). 

No, right now it was just him. Him and the door to the HR department that looked like it hadn’t been opened since they built the place. 

Him, the door, and a small, bright life force at the end of the hall.

“Mr. Tim?”

Shit. 

Tim didn’t look up from where he sat on the ground, elbows resting on his knees and fingers laced behind his neck. Part of him knew he should just go invisible, long enough that Juno lost interest and left to go back to his mother in the library, but it felt like every part of him was made of stone. He couldn’t muster the energy to vanish — just one more oxymoron in the long line of them that shaped his existence these days. 

“Mr. Tim? Are you okay?” 

Small trainers stepped into Tim’s line of sight, the lights on the sides giving one last multicolored flash. Another moment, and Juno’s round face followed as he bent double to look Tim in the eye. 

Tim tried to work up a smile, but with the way Juno’s brows furrowed he didn’t imagine he was successful. 

“What’re you doing here, Junie?” 

With a short huff, Juno flopped onto the floor next to Tim, his back set against the wall and legs stretched out straight ahead. “Today’s my mummy’s birthday, so me and daddy and Penny came to get her for birthday dinner. She likes fish.”

Tim dropped his hands, and though his head stayed low he looked in Juno’s direction. “Oh yeah? Do you?”

“No,” Juno answered, nose scrunched. “I get chicken nuggets.”

It went quiet. Juno tapped his toes together to make the lights on his trainers flicker. 

“Why are you sitting out here by yourself? It’s boring.”

Tim sighed. “Boredom isn’t so bad. You don’t need to be bored, though. Get back to your mum.”

“But when I’m bored here you always play with me.” Juno’s voice was earnest, but tempered with hesitation. “We can play again so you’re not bored too.”

“Thanks, but… I just want to sit for a while, yeah?” Hopefully, that’d be enough to get Juno to leave. He shouldn’t be around the Institute monsters. 

“Okay. We can sit together.” Dammit. “That’s what friends do.” Double dammit.

Tim sat back and let his head rest against the plaster. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Juno fiddle with one of the clips at the end of his tight braids. 

“Penny can crawl now."

The non-sequitur didn't faze Tim. Kids were full of them, ADHD brains were full of them, kids with ADHD spouted them like it was their job. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Everyone acts like it’s a big deal,” Juno continued as he tapped his shoes together again. “But it’s just crawling. I can crawl too.”

“Trust me, when you were that little your parents talked about it just as much.” 

Juno gave a loose, one-shouldered shrug. “I guess.”

Part of Tim wanted to leave it at that. Shut down the conversation. Juno would be unsatisfied, leave, and hopefully stop seeking out the company of things that could kill him easier than breathing. 

No. No, he couldn’t do that, not when he knew just how shit it was to be a kid and have adults make their adult-sized problems your problem too. That went double here as Juno confided something he more likely than not didn’t tell his parents. 

He took a breath, then shifted to face Juno. 

“Being a big brother’s a tough job, yeah? But Penny is gonna grow up with the best big brother in the world. You’re closer to her size, so you can show her how to crawl even better. When she starts to walk, you can hold her hands so she doesn’t fall. You can show her which games are the best and which ones are no fun.”

Juno looked thoughtful. “Mummy reads to her, but she doesn’t do the voices good enough. I can do voices.” 

“And when Penny starts reading? You show her how to do the voices just right. That way, when your mum and dad talk about the things she’s learning, you know you helped.”

“Mummy doesn’t have any brothers or sisters,” Juno said. “And daddy just has a big sister. They don’t know how to be the big one like you. Are you a big brother?”

“...Yeah. Yeah, I am. That’s how I learned all this. And someday, Penny is gonna see you and crawl right over because you’re _her_ big brother.” Tim’s throat went tight, but he kept his voice level. “And that’s when you’ll know what being her big brother means.”

Juno nodded firmly, with such an adult look of determination on his face that Tim couldn’t help but smile. With one more flash from his trainers, he hopped to his feet, then held his arms in a vague circular shape around Tim’s neck.

They couldn’t hug. That didn’t stop Tim from wrapping his arms around in return. 

A moment later, Juno pulled away. “I gotta go back, okay? Someone has to tell Penny that fish is gross, and she should get chicken nuggets too.”

“She can’t eat big kid food yet, can she?” Tim asked as he pushed himself to stand. 

“No,” Juno replied, looking at Tim like Tim clearly didn’t know what he was talking about. “But I gotta warn her _now_ so she knows.”

“Oh, right. Silly me.”

Juno looked down the hall, then back to Tim. “Um… I don’t know how to get back. I was gonna go to the bathroom, but I got lost.”

“S’alright. I’ll walk you back to the library.”

With a nod, Juno took a few steps, then stopped and pulled his jumper sleeve over his fingers.

“Make your hand be there.”

Tim blinked at him. “What?”

“Your hand. Make it so it can touch things.”

Tim obliged, then watched with slightly widened eyes as Juno took it in his own, the soft fabric between giving Tim’s hand form.

Like it did back in the ravine, the contact earned Tim a smile, but this time there was no trace of red. This one didn’t make him shake and go hollow. Juno’s smile filled that hollow in his chest with the sort of easy trust only a child could give. 

Hand in hand, Tim led Juno home.

* * *

It was quiet. 

Quiet in a way that carried softness, no void or echoes. Sunset filled the living room with streaks of orange and yellow. Further in, from the direction he could feel a light fading, music played. 

He followed the noise and the pull that had guided him to this home’s door, invisible the whole time. No need to make a scene. 

The bedroom Tim stepped into was tidy, a collection of different pill bottles in neat rows on the side table and a basket of yarn tucked by a chair in the corner. The balls of wool were dusty, like the owner hadn’t been able to use them in a while. 

The owner, who Tim was decidedly not looking towards. He didn’t need to know them. That part didn’t matter. He was here, they would die, he would leave. That was just… it. That was how it worked. 

“You the local psychopomp, then?” 

A woman’s voice came from the bed, thin but good-humored. Tim didn’t react. She couldn’t see him, so it wasn’t like she could be talking to him. 

“I can feel you, you know. Hard to dance with death as long as me and not get a sense of it.” 

Or maybe the End just liked it when, every time Tim thought he knew what the hell was going on, it could throw him for another loop.

She was talking to him. He got to have another conversation with someone terrified to die. Super. 

He dropped the invisibility. “Am I the what?”

“The psychopomp. You know, guide to the afterlife.” She didn’t so much as jump when he appeared, though considering she was the one to call him out in the first place, maybe that wasn’t a surprise. “Like Charon, or the Valkyries.” 

The woman in the bed sat propped against a large pillow, and though her black eyes were a little cloudy, they locked right onto him. She looked him up and down, and Tim could have sworn she was unimpressed. “No robe? No scythe?”

“Damn, I knew I forgot something at home.” Rolling with her humor came without a second thought, and when she laughed it settled something inside him. 

“Can’t believe they sent me the rookie,” she replied with a tut and a shake of her head. “Not even a skeleton. What, am I supposed to go gently into that good night?”

Tim sat in the chair pulled close to her bed. She must have frequent visitors. For some reason, rather than sadden him, the thought was warm. 

“I’ll go try and work off the extra weight and come back, then?”

The woman swatted at his arm, and didn’t look at all troubled when her hand went right through. “Just run a few laps around the house and we’ll see. I don’t think I’ll make it however long it takes you to get mummified!” 

Tim laughed at that. “Let’s see if we can get through long enough for me to finish processing you picking me out of nothing like that, alright? I know some folks with, uh, pretty good eyes, but he hasn’t done anything like that. Not yet, anyway.” 

“I’ve brushed with cancer a few times before.” She sighed a little and leaned back on her pillow. “And after a certain point of staring death in the eye, you get a feel for how he looks.” 

“And how he looks is not nearly skeletal enough, so I’m told.”

“You didn't even try to spook me! Either invisible or just a handsome young man.” A smile deepened the lines through her olive skin. “Disgraceful.”

“If it helps, I could make myself look scary,” Tim offered. 

Her eyes brightened. “Oh, could you? _Frightened to death_ is a much more interesting way to go than any illness.”

“Well, with a pitch like that, how could I refuse?” Tim stretched, then paused to check one last time. “You sure?”

She, of all things, rolled her eyes. “It was a joke, dear. I’m sure my heart can take it.” 

It was odd to pull for that look without the fury that triggered it both times previous, but in a moment he could feel it. Knifeclaw sharpness, copper in his mouth, acid veins and burning eyes. His hands went sharp as bone shards, and black lines of blood poisoning traced up his wrists and arms. 

He snarled at her. May as well give her the whole show, right? Spooky death man here for her soul, all that.

The woman’s face went white as she yelped and twisted the blanket tight in her grip, but it was only a moment before her terror shifted to the breathless laughter after a really good shock in a haunted house. She shook her head with a smile.

“Guess I only have myself to blame for that, hm?” 

Tim shook out his hands, and with it, the nightmare look. “Hey, I’m the one who went along with it.”

She laughed again and sank back down onto her pillow. “You’re too kind a young man to deny a dying woman her last wish, even if her last wish is to try and give herself a heart attack.” 

“Well,” he murmured as her eyes shifted close. “I figure it’s the least I can do. You stared death in the face, you were able to find it even when I was trying to hide, so if you want death to be spooky looking then I can damn well make it happen.”

“Mm. How’s the food in the afterlife?”

“Incredible.” The lie was harmless — Tim was sure his not-void hell after such a violent death would color very differently against something as quiet as this. “Anything you can think of, and it’s there. Better than any you’ve ever had.”

“Oh, I think my loukoumades would blow anything the angels have out of the water.” Her voice grew softer with each word, but Tim had no trouble hearing. “No one ever adds enough cinnamon.”

He tucked his hand under the uppermost blanket and took hers in his own. Whether she noticed the knit between them or not, that didn’t keep her from responding with her own gentle grip. 

“Then you’ll just have to show ‘em all they’re doing it wrong, yeah?” The grief he was expecting to hit like a freight train had yet to come. There was only the quiet. 

“And your next day off,” Ervina Pachis, age 87, hummed. “You come and try a bite.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

**Author's Note:**

> for the full experience of that last scene listen bronte by gotye and cry with me  
> the poem stuck in tim's head before he meets mallory is stopping by woods on a snowy evening by robert frost!
> 
> coming soon: tim finds an unlikely place of refuge
> 
> catch me at [@titanfalling](https://titanfalling) on tumblr!


End file.
